The attacks of September 11th, 2001 on the American soil had an undeniable impact in the political, religious and social fields of this new century, but also in the cultural one. They put to the test the very foundations of what is known as “americanism”, an ideology born with the United States and still mostly prevalent to this day. While the images of the two collapsing World Trade Center towers symbolized a historical breaking point, the national catastrophe has since then nourished a large amount of fictions. Through the study of eighteen works of fiction published in the following decade - various by forms but noteworthy by their impact on the US culture -, our work claims to unveil an operative typology through time which follows the various stages of the mourning process, from denial to possible rebuilding. Thus, the diachronic analysis of this corpus, in close relationship with the American culture and history of political ideas, intends to question the role of fiction towards the shock resulting from September 11th, in order to seize the evolutions and limits of it, when the real puts it to the test.